A DOCTOR LOOKS AT HITLER'S GANG

Diagnosed As Subject For

Mental Asylum


PARANOIACS AND LUNATICS.

A London doctor—an expert psychologist and psychiatrist, who has been on the staff of several mental asylums, and who has studied in Germany in an article in the London "Daily Herald," diagnoses Hitler and his chief colleagues as paranoiacs. For obvious reasons the doctor's name is not disclosed.
My special job (he writes) is to deal with people who are insane or mentally unstable. I am well acquainted with the German language, have paid several visits to Germany, and have long been interested in German affairs.
Certain aspects of the present Hitlerite regime impress me so forcibly from the viewpoint of my own speciality that I cannot help feeling that my views may prove of interest.
What chiefly interests the mental specialist is the overwhelming and undoubted fact that the leaders of Hitlerism are mentally unstable—in certain cases to the point of definite insanity.

Paranoia.

I must first introduce a word not yet widely known, i.e., paranoia (pronounced par-ah-noy-ah with the accent on the noy). It is the name of one of the most pernicious forms of insanity, sometimes loosely known as persecution mania.
An understanding of "paranoia" is the key to much that seems incomprehensible about Germany at the present moment. It is commoner in men than in women and first manifests itself between the ages of 30 and 50; it is a disease in which the intellectual faculties are not impaired with the exception of a disordered judgment; the reasoning powers are preserved but side-tracked.

Delusions.

The sufferer entertains a delusion that is completely false; where the delusion is concerned, he is usually quite logical in his reasoning, except that he begins with a false supposition; with false premises. The conclusions he arrives at would be perfectly correct if his assumptions were true in the first instance.
Outside that delusion, his conduct may seem perfectly normal, he may have complete self-control and often a degree of energy and intelligence superior to the average.
It is a disease that slowly worsens. Because of their peculiar personalities, few paranoiacs marry; and those who do, make a mess of it.
Oddly enough, only a small percentage of paranoiacs find their way into asylums. Most of them have harmless delusions that may not interfere with their jobs; and they often find an outlet for these in publishing pamphlet or books at their own expense; or by joining and organising eccentric or faddist movements. Many are clever enough to keep their delusions to themselves; a few become public nuisances and have to be looked after in asylums.

Murderous Mania.

Others are not diagnosed until they have committed irreparable harm; as, for example, the Russian doctor who assasinated the French President Doumer, and the Italian laborer who shot at President Roosevelt and mortally injured Mayor Cermak of Chicago.
A very common delusion among paranoiacs is that the Jews, Catholics, or Freemasons are responsible for all their ills. It is a step from this to their belief that all the ills of the world are due to these agencies.

Hitlerism.
Hitlerism is, then, to the mental specialist at any rate, a form of paranoia, a form of persecution-mania with the Jew as villain and scapegoat.
It is certainly a movement whose leaders are paranoiacs of considerable energy but of mediocre intelligence.

Goering.

Goering—more powerful perhaps than even Hitler—is an outstanding example. A record of his actions and pronouncements—taken even from the official Hitlerite organs—reveals without any vestige of a doubt that he is a paranoiac of the most dangerous type; with the savage ferocity, directed against Jew, Frenchman, Russian, non-German, non-Hitlerite, indeed against everybody, with the instability, the passionate impulsiveness, and the sadistic violent hate of the paranoiac.
Hate is the most characteristic symptom of paranoia-hatred of imaginary persecutors. Goering evidently found the Hate that he was not able to indulge so oppressive that he resorted—as do a certain percentage of paranoiacs—to drugs that might allay the violent and passionate emotions resulting from his delusions.

Violent Lunatic.

It is known that as far back as 1925 Goering was detained—after trouble with the Swedish police—at an asylum in Stockholm as a dangerously violent lunatic and drug-addict. Even at that time he entertained the delusions of being persecuted by imaginary enemies that is so characteristic of paranoia.
There is no doubt that if he were deprived of his morphine for one single week, he would be reduced to a pitiable state of slobbering demented insanity.
Yet this man has probably greater executive power than any one in Germany to-day. No wonder atrocities are common and constructive activities rare.

Hitler.

Hitler himself—half Slav by birth and a bachelor, despite his conventional and indeed reactionary views on the function of women and on marriage—is also a paranoiac and an extremely unstable person, as is indicated clearly in his autobiography.
He has found an outlet for much of his morbid ferocity, hate and aggressiveness in a form of violent oratory for which he had developed an unexpected gift.

Goebbels.

Dr. Goebbels—a disgruntled cripple of similar temperament, but less stupid and better educated—became the brains of the movement (and second-class brains at that), while Goering remained the hands of the party, and Hitler the tongue and figurehead. All of them had more energy than
ability and more luck than just reward.

Rosenberg.

Rosenberg—theorist of the movement and exponent of anti-Semitism— also showed in his works the lack of balance and judgment and the sadistic ferocity of the paranoiac.
In one of his "classic" works he demands that "on each telegraph pole from Munich to Berlin, the head of a prominent Jew must be displayed." The most righteous indignation of normal people against even the most depraved criminals would never express itself in such a manner.

Roehm.

Roehm—one of Hitler's right hand men—is a self-confessed homo-sexual who figured in a scandal that shocked Germany some years ago. Although he has abused his military power to satisfy his perverse desires, he is still military leader of the Nazis and Minister in Bavaria.

Dr. Rust.

A startling—almost unbelievable— comment—on Hitlerite practice was the recent appointment of Dr. Rust to the post of Minister of Education in Prussia. Three years ago he was compulsorily retired from his post as teacher and certified to be suffering from general paralysis of the insane, a disease of the brain in which the germ of that dread disease, syphilis, slowly corrodes the brain and gradually extinguishes its activities.
Now he controls education in Prussia and has been commissioned to dismiss teachers from schools and professors from universities because they are either Jews or hold Radical views.
Men of international repute as researchers are being torn from their laboratories, and their activities sterilised on the word of a man with a damaged brain.
One may well ask, what can such people do for Germany? By profession and temperament I am disposed to sympathise with the mentally unstable who need help rather than abuse, but the lunatic who runs amok must be dealt with drastically to protect the community, if lesser measures fail.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld. : 1912 - 1936), Monday 3 July 1933, page 4